Board game review of The Great Split – Monotonous drafting until the end

To Piatnik's Art Gallery, The Great Split from Horrible Guild and HeidelBär Spiele, the next big art-themed game of this year, is coming to the German market in September. Instead of tour guides in the museum, we now take on the role of art collectors. Instead of a bidding mechanism, we find an “I cut, you choose” mechanism here. You can find out how well The Great Split compares to Art Gallery in the following review.

Welcome to the most exclusive gala of the year, where the most renowned art collectors from all over the world meet and eagerly await tempting offers. They stop at nothing and like to rip off their opponents. Who will end up assembling the most prestigious collection of the century?

Simple gameplay

In The Great Split, our goal is to build the most prestigious collection of riches. True to its name, the process is characterized by an “I split, you choose” mechanism. So at the beginning of a round we divide our hand cards into two parts, put everything in an envelope and pass it on to our neighbor to the left. He then chooses one of the two parts and keeps it. He gives the other part back to us. We do the same with the cards of our right neighbor. In this way we create our own hand of cards, whose effects we use in the following action round to accumulate our wealth and obtain seals. The game is played over six rounds in which there are 3 ratings. Whoever has the most prestige points at the end of the final scoring wins.

Scoring takes place in the 3rd, 4th and 6th rounds. Which riches are scored in rounds 3 and 4 are determined randomly at the beginning of a game using scoring tiles. Depending on how far you have progressed in the respective resource bar, you receive victory points in different ways. For example, when it comes to jewels (topaz & emerald), only the type of which you have less is counted, but twice. This means that if you have 7 topaz and 9 emeralds, the 7 topaz are counted times 2 - i.e. 14 prestige points. Works of art, on the other hand, are valued according to the current art market. This value changes round by round and is adjusted on the artwork track, below the round track. If the art values ​​are evaluated, you compare the current number of works of art with the work of art track and receive the corresponding prestige points depending on the current point value. Books are valued according to the classic quantity principle. The highest prestige value exceeded is evaluated.

In the end it gets exciting

During the final scoring in round 6, all riches are scored again. In addition, there is an order rating. Here the exceeded order symbols on the resource bars as well as the progress of the corresponding seals determine how many prestige points we receive. We receive additional order points through our character card.

For each order symbol we receive one prestige point. These are multiplied for each star that we have exceeded on the corresponding seal track. For example, if we have 6 order symbols and 4 stars in the books, we will receive 24 prestige points at the end of the game. This scoring is done for all resource bars. Whoever has the most prestige points at the end wins the game.

Conclusion

The Great Split is a nice “I cut, you choose” game, but somehow it didn't offer us enough due to its sole focus on this mechanism. Because we continue playing with the cards we had in the previous round, too often we ended up with the same cards in our hand round after round, as there was hardly any rotation. If we received our neighbor's cards, the cards that we gave back in the previous round were of course included again. If we decided against these cards, they came back in the following round and then again and again... Great tactics were therefore hardly possible. You had to be content with what you ultimately received.

The envelopes into which you put the cards to give to your neighbor are also a bit too narrow. You constantly have the feeling of destroying the envelope and torturing the cards at the bottom a little more every time you push them in. In terms of components, The Great Split also has beautiful double-layered panels. However, everything around it – design, artwork, cards – is “just” good average.

Overall, The Great Split didn't really convince us, even if its basic structure sounded really interesting at the beginning. We simply don't have enough game for that, as there is hardly any difference from round to round. However, The Great Split is ideal as an introduction to the “I cut, you choose” mechanism. Casual players can enjoy easy rules that allow a quick start to the game. In addition, The Great Split has a pleasant playing time of around 35 - 45 minutes and can be played with up to 7 people. The Great Split is ideal for quick laps in large groups.

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